cPanel Web Hosting Revealed
For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel website hosting offers on the present web hosting market are furnished by a quite inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing segment, which provides a great quantity of different web hosting brands, yet offering the very same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace supply one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel website hosting prices are identical. Very much alike. Giving those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/web hosting CP alternative. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...
200k "website hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly named
The website hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just an ordinary person who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the site creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and websites. Are you ready to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting alternative you can settle on? Of course there is, these days there are more than 200,000 web hosting service providers out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different website hosting brand names all over the world will offer you the very same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on the contemporary web hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The website hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple math shows that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a colossal stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based website hosting solution
Let's not be cruel with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps covered most website hosting market preconditions. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Sign Number 1: A foolish domain name folder configuration
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extremely attentive not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very easy to remove on the server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Verify for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain folder structure is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)public_html/my-family (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-domain.com (an add-on domain)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain name)
public_html/my-third-domain.com (an add-on domain)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain)
public_html/rebeka (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/rebeka.my-third-wife.net (a sub-domain of an add-on domain)
Are you getting perplexed? We surely are!
Downside No.2: The very same electronic mail folder structure
The electronic mail folder configuration on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin blokes firmly enhance their faith in God when handling the email folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to mess things up too gravely.
Inconvenience No.3: A sheer absence of domain management tools
Do we need to bring up the total deficiency of a contemporary domain administration user interface - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domains' Whois details, protect the Whois information, modify/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not supply such a "modern" tool at all. That's a considerable problem. An unpardonable one, we would like to point out...
Drawback Number Four: Many user login places (min 2, maximum three)
How about the need for another login to avail of the invoicing, domain name and tech support management software solution? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based website hosting firm. At times, based on the invoice transaction system (especially devised for cPanel solely) the cPanel website hosting firm is utilizing, the keen customers can end up with two additional logins (1: the billing transaction/domain management software solution; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), winding up with a total of 3 login locations (counting cPanel).
Problem Number 5: More than 120 Control Panel departments to memorize... fast
cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them quickly... That's very insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based website hosting companies:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...